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Friday, September 14, 2007

Boca Raton priest charged with soliciting sex

The Rev. Michael Penland flushed his marriage and career down a dirty public toilet by soliciting sex from an undercover police officer while in a public park. I am not too clear as to why it is illegal to ask somebody to have sex if the intended place for the hook up is a private residence. Call me a rabid libertarian if you will, but it really is Penland's own business if he wants to do guys back at his house. Anyway, Penland is married, has kids, and is a youth pastor down in Boca Raton. He admits to five years of secret homosexual affairs. His church has placed him on suspension.

I normally do not report of the odd pastor who likes to play with the boys. But there is an undertone to the story that I do not like. It seems people are concerned because he is a youth pastor. In the last year or so I've reported on many child predictors, but I cannot remember one that was cruising parks for gay sex. I do not think there is a link between adult consensual homosexual sex and child sexual abuse. Penland has a sex addiction problem, or he has been living a lie or both. The whole "danger to children" concern appears to be overblown.

I would say, why do so many devoutly religious have weird hangups like secret homosexuality etc, but I suppose there are LOTS of homosexual people NOT devoutly religious, so that kind of defeats my first reaction. A lot of times however when people lose their marbles they often have religious grandiosities, probably because that part of the brain has something to do with certain disorders. Just like how many lesbians (a la my sister) look similar, and a lot of gay people have that "gay man" look about them... I wonder if there is some sort of connection like that with certain religious folk. I know certain personality types usually cluster (math & science lovers, versus language and humanitarian types) and some of those personalities are more prone to being religious than others. So I wonder if the personality types usually gravitating towards religions have some kind of OTHER things in common.

My brother is an evangelical (he must have been hatched from an egg or something, I'm truly the first child) and everyone thinks he is gay. He def has some gaydars going off...